Witcher 3 uses dynamic resolution scaling on Xbox One to hit 1080p

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

As Xbox One owners know, titles often don’t run a native resolution of 1920×1080. Its underpowered GPU leaves many developers sacrificing resolution, fidelity, or frame rate to get their games up and running. However, the developers at CD Projekt RED aren’t content to compromise. To squeeze out every ounce of power, the upcoming game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will dynamically raise the resolution up to 1080p whenever possible. While it’s not a perfect solution, this is likely the best way forward on the existing hardware.

Earlier this year, CD Projekt RED confirmed that its latest title would run at 1080p on the PS4 and 900p on the Xbox One. Both versions will be running at 30fps, but the resolution difference was disappointing — if not surprising. But earlier this week, the Polish company announced that the Xbox One version will actually be dynamically running anywhere between 900p and 1080p. In a public statement, the developers confirmed that they have “been working to give gamers an even better experience on Xbox One and, on day one, we’ll bring you dynamic scaling from 900p to 1080p.”

In the video above, you’ll be able to see it seamlessly shift between rendering at 900p and 1080p. Of course, you’ll need to be viewing it in 1080p mode to see any difference, and the heavy compression doesn’t help matters. But more importantly, less graphically demanding scenes will be running at a full 1080p on the Xbox One. Provided that there aren’t any glaring technical issues introduced here, this is nothing but gravy for Xbox One owners.

Launching worldwide on May 19th, this title holds the potential to be the next big thing. It’s already received over a million pre-orders, and the reviews have been positive across the board. By all accounts, The Witcher 3 is an early frontrunner for game of the year. And this news means that it’ll be even better than we hoped it would be on the Xbox One.

With all of that console-focused coverage out of the way, the PC version is almost certainly the version to get. We still don’t know exactly how well it runs, but CD Projekt RED is traditionally a PC-focused developer. And while you’re going to need a high-end system to play the game, there are some big benefits. The game will look gorgeous, the GOG version doesn’t have any DRM, and third-party mods are bound to pop-up eventually. At the very least, Cheat Engine will enable some fun ways to break the game at will.

The gaming community has shown that it has a huge appetite for massive fantasy worlds these days. After Skyrim revitalized the fantasy RPG genre in 2011, we’ve seen plenty of other games crib from that formula. Last year saw the massive release of Dragon Age: Inquisition from EA, and even Nintendo is getting in on the action with the Zelda franchise. If the hype holds true, The Witcher 3 is set to be the next Skyrim.

slow it down and zoom in or put your face closer to the screen. Seriously, people make such a big deal in 900p upscale to 1080 vs native 1080p. Nobody is going to notice any difference unless they’re really looking for it.

You won’t see much difference until about next year when they learn to exploit every possible resource from the consoles and the PS4 can finally flex its 50% additional GPU power. But then Nintendo will launch its next gen which will probably put Sony and MS consoles to shame.

Tom Sawyer

It’ll take a LOT longer than one year to optimize the current gen game engines, I guarantee it. It took the last gen 5-6 years! Sure, they’ll look more impressive next year (and the year after, and so on) but they wont be “squeezing all the power out of it” for quite some time. Next gen launch titles still look like newer 360/ps3 games with slightly better textures (or like pc games from a few years back…). I say give it 3-4 years minimum.

If you’re talking about the Halo MCE, then the game was just bugged for a while. Don’t know why they didn’t wait 3 months to iron it out before launching such a catastrophe.

VirtualMark

It’s still broken, try playing split screen as mentioned above.

Generalkidd

There’s almost no difference between 900p and 1080p. Most people won’t be able to tell the difference.

Tom Sawyer

Exactly. 180 vertical pixels is the difference. Unless you have an 80in+ screen, and/or sit less than a foot from your screen and literally count pixels, you wont notice the difference at all. As someone with both current gen consoles (Im a sucker for exclusives) and a 65in tv (also used as a monitor) there is literally no visible difference.

While I plan to buy W3 for PC, but I do think the console versions look great. Cant wait to see what these console games look like 5 years from now when the game engines are optimized out the wazoo.

On a side note, I still play my Mega Drive and SNES and think those are still great too. Are they 1080p, no. Do they have great games that are awesomely fun? YES. Good old 480p! (I just beat “Chakan the Forever Man” (MegaDrive/Genesis) again, and have now moved onto Actraiser 2 (SNES)).

Derrick Lee

Then the developers wasted their time on trying to improve the game for xbone users

Generalkidd

Yeah probably, but it’s all just marketing stuff. If your game can hit 1080p, consumers will love it because of the big deal around resolution these days, even if 900p and 1080p is such a miniscule difference. Plus, 1080 is a 4 digit number while 900 is a 3 digit number. To your average consumer, the psychology of it is that the extra digit looks like a huge jump. It’s the same reason why pricing a game at $59.99 is a huge difference to consumers than pricing a game at $60. It just looks cheaper when the difference is so small. It’s how the market manipulates consumers.

Wait… such an avid fan of everything msft and you don’t recall not one, not two, but three key players from msft saying how little dx12 will affect the xb1?

You have graduated to fanatic it seems… it wouldn’t matter how many sites, to include their own, I link you to since you hold one of the traits of a fanatic: selective listening/reading…. which means you know it is there but have chosen to not accept its existence.

Go ahead, wear your hopes, or rather, your denial on your sleeve all the while knowing the truth, trying in futility to push it back into the depths of your mind. But.., do not come crying when it happens and the xb1 remains unchanged.. ( more likely you and your brood will claim it takes time to optimize something or other to benefit from something or other, blah blah blah…).

Wouldn’t it be better to put that imagination to work on something positive, rather than fanatical ignorance? W/e, bye now.

Agrippa

Hmm so now it’s little? What happened to no difference? As I said “no difference” was never said thanks. Also there are various opinions on dx12. I don’t care who’s a fan of what just pointing out your misinformation. Nice pointless rant though. Probably some Sony tool. Just some advice I don’t care about console wars. Have a great day. Ignorance is bliss.

Mirimon

“er… no… dx12 will make little to no difference. “

little to no….

see how your ignorant fanaticism modifies everything you see, read, or hear and twist it into your own desire?

Ignorance isn’t bliss, not sure why people seem to think that ignorance means to not know something..Ignorance, comes from ignore, and to ignore something one must already have knowledge if its existence.

WARNING! stop reading now, as below there are facts, supporting evidence that is contrary to your beliefs and your claims. I would hate for you to see even more proof and have to go through the effort of ignoring it as well.

but, here’s your golden god idol, Phil Spencer saying just that:

“On the DX12 question, I was asked early on by people if DX12 is gonna dramatically change the graphics capabilities of Xbox One and I said it wouldn’t. I’m not trying to rain on anybody’s parade, but the CPU, GPU and memory that are on Xbox One don’t change when you go to DX12. DX12 makes it easier to do some of the things that Xbox One’s good at, which will be nice and you’ll see improvement in games that use DX12, but people ask me if it’s gonna be dramatic and I think I answered no at the time and I’ll say the same thing.”- PHIL SPENCER

was during an interview, and not the first or only time he has stated as much. That interview (one of them) is here:

Now.. the only dolt out there who made the statement that the changes would be substantial (and THAT is taken out of context) was Greenburg, who knows next to nothing about it as he is merely a marketing boss…. MARKETING…. he also says in the same quote that it will not make every thing better instantly, that it will be completely up to developers to use it….

“I think there is a lot of confusion around what and why DX12 will improve. Most games out there can’t go 1080p because the additional load on the shading units would be too much. For all these games DX12 is not going to change anything,”

“They might be able to push more triangles to the GPU but they are not going to be able to shade them, which defeats the purpose.”

You might see a change, in time and on PC first..it will likely be near the end of the xb1 life cycle before dx12 is utilized as much as possible on the xb1, and there is still that convoluted ESRAM flapping about as well. But there you have it.. the head honcho himself and 3rd party AAA developers… this is much more where that came from.

Loghorn

Xbox fanboys like Agrippa are so dumb, it’s pathetic. Always falling for that marketing/PR bullshit; It makes me laugh so hard!

Jerm

“You’ll be able to see it seamlessly shift between rendering”
Don’t you mean I won’t be able to see it?

Zorro_x_Kakashi

Well Done, too bad i can’t tell the diffrence either way, but for those who can i sure hope this is good news : )

You seem to be a particularly angry and troubled individual.
It’s concerning that you demonstrate such hostility.

VirtualMark

I don’t see what was hostile about my comment. You don’t seem to be able to grasp that some people have different preferences to others, so I was trying to help you. Don’t mistake my pity for anger, I truly feel sorry for people of such low intellect.

Joel Detrow

tl;dr of the entire conversation: “My opinion is better than yours, you big dummy.”

The esram on xbox one will handle it, but is going to be tight…The exclusives from sony will take.

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

ExtremeTech Newsletter

Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.

Email

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our
Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletter at any time.